Chs. Merivale:
Conversion of the Roman Empire (Boyle Lectures for 1864), republ. N.
York 1865. Comp. also his History of the Romans under the Empire, which
goes from Julius Caesar to Marcus Aurelius, Lond. & N. York, 7 vols.

For the first three centuries
Christianity was placed in the most unfavorable circumstances, that it might
display its moral power, and gain its victory over the world by spiritual
weapons alone. Until the reign of Constantine it had not even a legal existence
in the Roman empire, but was first ignored as a Jewish sect, then slandered,
proscribed, and persecuted, as a treasonable innovation, and the adoption of it
made punishable with confiscation and death. Besides, it offered not the
slightest favor, as Mohammedanism afterwards did, to the corrupt inclinations
of the heart, but against the current ideas of Jews and heathen it so presented
its inexorable demand of repentance and conversion, renunciation of self and
the world, that more, according to Tertullian, were kept out of the new sect by
love of pleasure than by love of life. The Jewish origin of Christianity also,
and the poverty and obscurity of a majority of its professors particularly
offended the pride of the Greeks, and Romans. Celsus, exaggerating this fact,
and ignoring the many exceptions, scoffingly remarked, that "weavers,
cobblers, and fullers, the most illiterate persons" preached the
"irrational faith," and knew how to commend it especially "to
women and children."

But in spite of these extraordinary
difficulties Christianity made a progress which furnished striking evidence of
its divine origin and adaptation to the deeper wants of man, and was employed
as such by Irenaeus, Justin, Tertullian, and other fathers of that day. Nay,
the very hindrances became, in the hands of Providence, means of promotion.
Persecution led to martyrdom, and martyrdom had not terrors alone, but also
attractions, and stimulated the noblest and most unselfish form of ambition.
Every genuine martyr was a living proof of the truth and holiness of the
Christian religion. Tertullian could exclaim to the heathen: "All your
ingenious cruelties can accomplish nothing; they are only a lure to this sect.
Our number increases the more you destroy us. The blood of the Christians is their
seed." The moral earnestness of the Christians contrasted powerfully with
the prevailing corruption of the age, and while it repelled the frivolous and
voluptuous, it could not fail to impress most strongly the deepest and noblest
minds. The predilection of the poor and oppressed for the gospel attested its
comforting and redeeming power. But others also, though not many, from the
higher and educated classes, were from the first attracted to the new religion;
such men as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathaea, the apostle Paul, the proconsul
Sergius Paulus, Dionysius of Athens, Erastus of Corinth, and some members of
the imperial household. Among the sufferers in Domitian's persecution were his
own near kinswoman Flavia Domitilla and her husband Flavius Clemens. In the
oldest part of the Catacomb of Callistus, which is named after St. Lucina,
members of the illustrious gens Pomponia, and perhaps also of the Flavian house, are interred. The senatorial and
equestrian orders furnished several converts open or concealed. Pliny laments,
that in Asia Minor men of every rank (omnis ordinis) go over to the Christians. Tertullian asserts that the
tenth part of Carthage, and among them senators and ladies of the noblest
descent and the nearest relatives of the proconsul of Africa professed
Christianity. The numerous church fathers from the middle of the second
century, a Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, Tertullian,
Cyprian, excelled, or at least equalled in talent and culture, their most
eminent heathen contemporaries.

Nor was this progress confined
to any particular localities. It extended alike over all parts of the empire.
"We are a people of yesterday," says Tertullian in his Apology,
"and yet we have filled every place belonging to you—cities, islands,
castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace,
senate, forum! We leave you your
temples only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will
be greater." All these facts expose the injustice of the odious charge of
Celsus, repeated by a modern sceptic, that the new sect was almost entirely
composed of the dregs of the populace—of peasants and mechanics, of boys and
women, of beggars and slaves.

§ 5. Causes of the Success of Christianity.

The chief positive cause of the
rapid spread and ultimate triumph of Christianity is to be found in its own
absolute intrinsic worth, as the universal religion of salvation, and in the
perfect teaching and example of its divine-human Founder, who proves himself to
every believing heart a Saviour from sin and a giver of eternal life.
Christianity is adapted to all classes, conditions, and relations among men, to
all nationalities and races, to all grades of culture, to every soul that longs
for redemption from sin, and for holiness of life. Its value could be seen in
the truth and self-evidencing power of its doctrines; in the purity and
sublimity of its precepts; in its regenerating and sanctifying effects on heart
and life; in the elevation of woman and of home life over which she presides;
in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and suffering; in the faith,
the brotherly love, the beneficence, and the triumphant death of its
confessors.

To this internal moral and
spiritual testimony were added the powerful outward proof of its divine origin
in the prophecies and types of the Old Testament, so strikingly fulfilled in
the New; and finally, the testimony of the miracles, which, according to the
express statements of Quadratus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen,
and others, continued in this period to accompany the preaching of missionaries
from time to time, for the conversion of the heathen.

Particularly favorable outward
circumstances were the extent, order, and unity of the Roman empire, and the
prevalence of the Greek language and culture.

In addition to these positive
causes, Christianity had a powerful negative advantage in the hopeless
condition of the Jewish and heathen world. Since the fearful judgment of the
destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism wandered restless and accursed, without
national existence. Heathenism outwardly held sway, but was inwardly rotten and
in process of inevitable decay. The popular religion and public morality were
undermined by a sceptical and materialistic philosophy; Grecian science and art
had lost their creative energy; the Roman empire rested only on the power of
the sword and of temporal interests; the moral bonds of society were sundered;
unbounded avarice and vice of every kind, even by the confession of a Seneca
and a Tacitus, reigned in Rome and in the provinces, from the throne to the
hovel. Virtuous emperors, like Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, were the
exception, not the rule, and could not prevent the progress of moral decay.
Nothing, that classic antiquity in its fairest days had produced, could heal
the fatal wounds of the age, or even give transient relief. The only star of
hope in the gathering night was the young, the fresh, the dauntless religion of
Jesus, fearless of death, strong in faith, glowing with love, and destined to
commend itself more and more to all reflecting minds as the only living
religion of the present and the future. While the world was continually
agitated by wars, and revolutions, and public calamities, while systems of
philosophy, and dynasties were rising and passing away, the new religion, in
spite of fearful opposition from without and danger from within, was silently
and steadily progressing with the irresistible force of truth, and worked
itself gradually into the very bone and blood of the race.

"Christ appeared,"
says the great Augustin, "to the men of the decrepit, decaying world, that
while all around them was withering away, they might through Him receive new,
youthful life."

Notes.

Gibbon, in his famous fifteenth
chapter, traces the rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman empire to five
causes: the zeal of the early Christians, the belief in future rewards and
punishment, the power of miracles, the austere (pure) morals of the Christian,
and the compact church organization. But these causes are themselves the
effects of a cause which Gibbon ignores, namely, the divine truth of
Christianity, the perfection of Christ's teaching and Christ's example. See the
strictures of Dr. John Henry Newman, Grammar of Assent, 445 sq., and Dr.
George P. Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 543 sqq. "The
zeal" [of the early Christians], says Fisher, "was zeal for a person,
and for a cause identified with Him; the belief in the future life sprang out
of faith in Him who had died and risen again, and ascended to Heaven; the
miraculous powers of the early disciples were consciously connected with the
same source; the purification of morals, and the fraternal unity, which lay at
the basis of ecclesiastical association among the early Christians, were
likewise the fruit of their relation to Christ, and their common love to Him.
The victory of Christianity in the Roman world was the victory of Christ, who
was lifted up that He might draw all men unto Him."

Lecky (Hist. of Europ. Morals,
I. 412) goes deeper than Gibbon, and accounts for the success of early
Christianity by its intrinsic excellency and remarkable adaptation to the wants
of the times in the old Roman empire. "In the midst of this
movement," he says, "Christianity gained its ascendancy, and we can
be at no loss to discover the cause of its triumph. No other religion, under
such circumstances, had ever combined so many distinct elements of power and
attraction. Unlike the Jewish religion, it was bound by no local ties, and was
equally adapted for every nation and for every class. Unlike Stoicism, it
appealed in the strongest manner to the affections, and offered all the charm
of a sympathetic worship. Unlike the Egyptian religion, it united with its
distinctive teaching a pure and noble system of ethics, and proved itself
capable of realizing it in action. It proclaimed, amid a vast movement of
social and national amalgamation, the universal brotherhood of mankind. Amid
the softening influence of philosophy and civilization, it taught the supreme
sanctity of love. To the slave, who had never before exercised so large an
influence over Roman religious life, it was the religion of the suffering and
the oppressed. To the philosopher it was at once the echo of the highest ethics
of the later Stoics, and the expansion of the best teaching of the school of
Plato. To a world thirsting for prodigy, it offered a history replete with
wonders more strange than those of Apollonius; while the Jew and the Chaldean
could scarcely rival its exorcists, and the legends of continual miracles
circulated among its followers. To a world deeply conscious of political
dissolution, and prying eagerly and anxiously into the future, it proclaimed
with a thrilling power the immediate destruction of the globe—the glory of all
its friends, and the damnation of all its foes. To a world that had grown very
weary gazing on the cold passionless grandeur which Cato realized, and which
Lucan sung, it presented an ideal of compassion and of love—an ideal destined
for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest, as well as all that was
noblest upon earth—a Teacher who could weep by the sepulchre of His friend, who
was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. To a world, in fine,
distracted by hostile creeds and colliding philosophies, it taught its
doctrines, not as a human speculation, but as a Divine revelation,
authenticated much less by reason than by faith. 'With the heart man believeth
unto righteousness;' 'He that doeth the will of my Father will know the doctrine,
whether it be of God;' 'Unless you believe you cannot understand;' 'A heart
naturally Christian;' 'The heart makes the theologian,' are the phrases which
best express the first action of Christianity upon the world. Like all great
religions, it was more concerned with modes of feeling than with modes of
thought. The chief cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with
the spiritual nature of mankind. It was because it was true of the moral
sentiments of the age, because it represented faithfully the supreme type of
excellence to which men were then tending, because it corresponded with their
religious wants, aims, and emotions, because the whole spiritual being could
then expand and expatiate under its influence that it planted its roots so deeply
in the hearts of men."

Merivale (Convers. of the Rom. Emp., Preface)
traces the conversion of the Roman empire chiefly to four causes: 1) the
external evidence of the apparent fulfilment of recorded prophecy and miracles
to the truth of Christianity; 2) the internal evidence of satisfying the
acknowledged need of a redeemer and sanctifier; 3) the goodness and holiness
manifested in the lives and deaths of the primitive believers; 4) the temporal
success of Christianity under Constantine, which "turned the mass of
mankind, as with a sweeping revolution, to the rising sun of revealed truth in
Christ Jesus."

Renan discusses the reasons for the
victory of Christianity in the 31st chapter of his Marc-Aurèle (Paris
1882), pp. 561-588. He attributes it chiefly "to the new discipline of
life," and "the moral reform," which the world required, which
neither philosophy nor any of the established religions could give. The Jews
indeed rose high above the corruptions of the times. "Glorie
éternelle et unique, qui doit faire oublier bien des folies et des
violence! Les Juifs sont les
révolutionnaires du 1er et du 2e siècle de notre ère." They gave to the world
Christianity. "Les populations se précipitèrent, par une sorte du
mouvement instinctif, dans une secte qui satisfaisait leur aspirations les plus
intimes et ouvrait des ésperances infinies." Renan makes much account of the belief in
immortality and the offer of complete pardon to every sinner, as allurements to
Christianity; and, like Gibbon, he ignores its real power as a religion of
salvation. This accounts for its success not only in the old Roman empire, but
in every country and nation where it has found a home.

§ 6. Means of Propagation.

It is a remarkable fact that
after the days of the Apostles no names of great missionaries are mentioned
till the opening of the middle ages, when the conversion of nations was
effected or introduced by a few individuals as St. Patrick in Ireland, St.
Columba in Scotland, St. Augustine in England, St. Boniface in Germany, St.
Ansgar in Scandinavia, St. Cyril and Methodius among the Slavonic races. There
were no missionary societies, no missionary institutions, no organized efforts
in the ante-Nicene age; and yet in less than 300 years from the death of St.
John the whole population of the Roman empire which then represented the
civilized world was nominally Christianized.

To understand this astonishing
fact, we must remember that the foundation was laid strong and deep by the
apostles themselves. The seed scattered by them from Jerusalem to Rome, and
fertilized by their blood, sprung up as a bountiful harvest. The word of our
Lord was again fulfilled on a larger scale: "One soweth, and another
reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not labored: others have
labored, and ye are entered into their labor" (John 4:38).

Christianity once established
was its own best missionary. It grew naturally from within. It attracted people
by its very presence. It was a light shining in darkness and illuminating the
darkness. And while there were no professional missionaries devoting their
whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society,
and every Christian believer a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ to
convert his fellow-men. The example had been set by Jerusalem and Antioch, and
by those brethren who, after the martyrdom of Stephen, "were scattered
abroad and went about preaching the Word."4Justin Martyr was converted by a venerable old
man whom he met "walking on the shore of the sea." Every Christian
laborer, says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests him, though
Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the Creator, and difficult when
he is found to make him known to all." Celsus scoffingly remarks that
fuller, and workers in wool and leather, rustic and ignorant persons, were the
most zealous propagators of Christianity, and brought it first to women and
children. Women and slaves introduced it into the home-circle, it is the glory
of the gospel that it is preached to the poor and by the poor to make them
rich. Origen informs us that the city churches sent their missionaries to the
villages. The seed grew up while men slept, and brought forth fruit, first the
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. Every Christian told
his neighbor, the laborer to his fellow-laborer, the slave to his fellow-slave,
the servant to his master and mistress, the story of his conversion, as a
mariner tells the story of the rescue from shipwreck.

The gospel was propagated
chiefly by living preaching and by personal intercourse; to a considerable
extent also through the sacred Scriptures, which were early propagated and
translated into various tongues, the Latin (North African and Italian), the
Syriac (the Curetonian and the Peshito), and the Egyptian (in three dialects,
the Memphitic, the Thebaic, and the Bashmuric). Communication among the
different parts of the Roman empire from Damascus to Britain was comparatively
easy and safe. The highways built for commerce and for the Roman legions,
served also the messengers of peace and the silent conquests of the cross.
Commerce itself at that time, as well as now, was a powerful agency in carrying
the gospel and the seeds of Christian civilization to the remotest parts of the
Roman empire.

The particular mode, as well as
the precise time, of the introduction of Christianity into the several
countries during this period is for the most part uncertain, and we know not
much more than the fact itself. No doubt much more was done by the apostles and
their immediate disciples, than the New Testament informs us of. But on the
other hand the mediaeval tradition assigns an apostolic origin to many national
and local churches which cannot have arisen before the second or third century.
Even Joseph of Arimathaea, Nicodemus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Lazarus, Martha
and Mary were turned by the legend into missionaries to foreign lands.

§ 7. Extent of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

Justin Martyr says, about the
middle of the second century: "There is no people, Greek or barbarian, or
of any other race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be
distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell in
tents or wander about in covered wagons—among whom prayers and thanksgivings
are not offered in the name of the crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of
all things." Half a century later, Tertullian addresses the heathen
defiantly: "We are but of yesterday, and yet we already fill your cities,
islands, camps, your palace, senate and forum; we have left to you only your
temples."5These, and similar passages of Irenaeus and
Arnobius, are evidently rhetorical exaggerations. Origen is more cautious and
moderate in his statements. But it may be fairly asserted, that about the end
of the third century the name of Christ was known, revered, and persecuted in
every province and every city of the empire. Maximian, in one of his edicts,
says that "almost all" had abandoned the worship of their ancestors
for the new sect.

In the absence of statistics,
the number of the Christians must be purely a matter of conjecture. In all
probability it amounted at the close of the third and the beginning of the
fourth century to nearly one-tenth or one-twelfth of the subjects of Rome, that
is to about ten millions of souls.

But the fact, that the
Christians were a closely united body, fresh, vigorous, hopeful, and daily
increasing, while the heathen were for the most part a loose aggregation, daily
diminishing, made the true prospective strength of the church much greater.

The propagation of Christianity
among the barbarians in the provinces of Asia and the north-west of Europe
beyond the Roman empire, was at first, of course, too remote from the current
of history to be of any great immediate importance. But it prepared the way for
the civilization of those regions, and their subsequent position in the world.

Notes.

Gibbon and Friedländer (III.
531) estimate the number of Christians at the accession of Constantine (306)
probably too low at one-twentieth; Matter and Robertson too high at one-fifth
of his subjects. Some older writers, misled by the hyperbolical statements of
the early Apologists, even represent the Christians as having at least equalled
if not exceeded the number of the heathen worshippers in the empire. In this
case common prudence would have dictated a policy of toleration long before
Constantine. Mosheim, in his Hist. Commentaries, etc. (Murdock's
translation I. p. 274 sqq.) discusses at length the number of Christians in the
second century without arriving at definite conclusions. Chastel estimates the
number at the time of Constantine at 1/15 in the West, 1/10 in the East, 1/12
on an average (Hist. de la destruct. du paganisme, p. 36). According to Chrysostom,
the Christian population of Antioch in his day (380) was about 100,000, or
one-half of the whole.

§ 8. Christianity in Asia.

Asia was the cradle of
Christianity, as it was of humanity and civilization. The apostles themselves
had spread the new religion over Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. According to
the younger Pliny, under Trajan, the temples of the gods in Asia Minor were
almost forsaken, and animals of sacrifice found hardly any purchasers. In the
second century Christianity penetrated to Edessa in Mesopotamia, and some
distance into Persia, Media, Bactria, and Parthia; and in the third, into
Armenia and Arabia. Paul himself had, indeed, spent three years in Arabia, but
probably in contemplative retirement preparing for his apostolic ministry.
There is a legend, that the apostles Thomas and Bartholomew carried the gospel
to India. But a more credible statement is, that the Christian teacher Pantaeus
of Alexandria journeyed to that country about 190, and that in the fourth
century churches were found there.

The transfer of the seat of
power from Rome to Constantinople, and the founding of the East Roman empire
under Constantine I. gave to Asia Minor, and especially to Constantinople, a
commanding importance in the history of the Church for several centuries. The
seven oecumenical Councils from 325 to 787 were all held in that city or its
neighborhood, and the doctrinal controversies on the Trinity and the person of
Christ were carried on chiefly in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt.

In the mysterious providence of
God those lands of the Bible and the early church have been conquered by the
prophet of Mecca, the Bible replaced by the Koran, and the Greek church reduced
to a condition of bondage and stagnation; but the time is not far distant when
the East will be regenerated by the undying spirit of Christianity. A peaceful
crusade of devoted missionaries preaching the pure gospel and leading holy lives
will reconquer the holy land and settle the Eastern question.

§ 9. Christianity in Egypt.

In Africa Christianity gained
firm foothold first in Egypt, and there probably as early as the apostolic age.
The land of the Pharaohs, of the pyramids and sphinxes, of temples and tombs,
of hieroglyphics and mummies, of sacred bulls and crocodiles, of despotism and
slavery, is closely interwoven with sacred history from the patriarchal times,
and even imbedded in the Decalogue as "the house of bondage." It was
the home of Joseph and his brethren, and the cradle of Israel. In Egypt the
Jewish Scriptures were translated more than two hundred years before our era,
and this Greek version used even by Christ and the apostles, spread Hebrew
ideas throughout the Roman world, and is the mother of the peculiar idiom of
the New Testament. Alexandria was full of Jews, the literary as well as
commercial centre of the East, and the connecting link between the East and the
West. There the largest libraries were collected; there the Jewish mind came
into close contact with the Greek, and the religion of Moses with the
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. There Philo wrote, while Christ taught in
Jerusalem and Galilee, and his works were destined to exert a great influence
on Christian exegesis through the Alexandrian fathers.

Mark, the evangelist, according
to ancient tradition, laid the foundation of the church of Alexandria. The
Copts in old Cairo, the Babylon of Egypt, claim this to be the place from which
Peter wrote his first epistle (1 Pet. 5:13); but he must mean either the
Babylon on the Euphrates, or the mystic Babylon of Rome. Eusebius names, as the
first bishops of Alexandria, Annianos (a.d.
62-85), Abilios (to 98), and Kerdon (to 110). This see naturally grew up to metropolitan
and patriarchal importance and dignity. As early as the second century a
theological school flourished in Alexandria, in which Clement and Origen taught
as pioneers in biblical learning and Christian philosophy. From Lower Egypt the
gospel spread to Middle and Upper Egypt and the adjacent provinces, perhaps (in
the fourth century) as far as Nubia, Ethiopia, and Abyssinia. At a council of
Alexandria in the year 235, twenty bishops were present from the different
parts of the land of the Nile.

During the fourth century Egypt
gave to the church the Arian heresy, the Athanasian orthodoxy, and the monastic
piety of St. Antony and St. Pachomius, which spread with irresistible force
over Christendom.

The theological literature of
Egypt was chiefly Greek. Most of the early manuscripts of the Greek
Scriptures—including probably the invaluable Sinaitic and Vatican MSS.—were
written in Alexandria. But already in the second century the Scriptures were
translated into the vernacular language, in three different dialects. What
remains of these versions is of considerable weight in ascertaining the
earliest text of the Greek Testament.

The Christian Egyptians are the
descendants of the Pharaonic Egyptians, but largely mixed with negro and Arab
blood. Christianity never fully penetrated the nation, and was almost swept
away by the Mohammedan conquest under the Caliph Omar (640), who burned the
magnificent libraries of Alexandria under the plea that if the books agreed
with the Koran, they were useless, if not, they were pernicious and fit for
destruction. Since that time Egypt almost disappears from church history, and
is still groaning, a house of bondage under new masters. The great mass of the
people are Moslems, but the Copts—about half a million of five and a half
millions—perpetuate the nominal Christianity of their ancestors, and form a
mission field for the more active churches of the West.

These books treat of
the secular history of the ancient Carthaginians, but help to understand the
situation and antecedents.

Julius Lloyd;
The North African Church. London, 1880. Comes down to the Moslem
Conquest.

The inhabitants of the provinces
of Northern Africa were of Semitic origin, with a language similar to the
Hebrew, but became Latinized in customs, laws, and language under the Roman
rule. The church in that region therefore belongs to Latin Christianity, and
plays a leading part in its early history.

The Phoenicians, a remnant of
the Canaanites, were the English of ancient history. They carried on the
commerce of the world; while the Israelites prepared the religion, and the
Greeks the civilization of the world. Three small nations, in small countries,
accomplished a more important work than the colossal empires of Assyria,
Babylon, and Persia, or even Rome. Occupying a narrow strip of territory on the
Syrian coast, between Mount Lebanon and the sea, the Phoenicians sent their
merchant vessels from Tyre and Sidon to all parts of the old world from India
to the Baltic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope two thousand years before Vasco de
Gama, and brought back sandal wood from Malabar, spices from Arabia, ostrich
plumes from Nubia, silver from Spain, gold from the Niger, iron from Elba, tin
from England, and amber from the Baltic. They furnished Solomon with cedars
from Lebanon, and helped him to build his palace and the temple. They founded
on the northernmost coast of Africa, more than eight hundred years before
Christ, the colony of Carthage.6 From that
favorable position they acquired the control over the northern coast of Africa
from the pillars of Hercules to the Great Syrtes, over Southern Spain, the
islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the whole Mediterranean sea. Hence the
inevitable rivalry between Rome and Carthage, divided only by three days' sail;
hence the three Punic wars which, in spite of the brilliant military genius of Hannibal,
ended in the utter destruction of the capital of North Africa (b.c. 146).7"Delenda est Carthago," was the narrow and cruel policy of the
elder Cato. But under Augustus, who carried out the wiser plan of Julius
Caesar, there arose a new Carthage on the ruins of the old, and became a rich
and prosperous city, first heathen, then Christian, until it was captured by
the barbarous Vandals (a.d. 439),
and finally destroyed by a race cognate to its original founders, the
Mohammedan Arabs (647). Since that time "a mournful and solitary
silence" once more brooded over its ruins.8

Christianity reached proconsular
Africa in the second, perhaps already at the close of the first century, we do
not know when and how. There was constant intercourse with Italy. It spread
very rapidly over the fertile fields and burning sands of Mauritania and
Numidia. Cyprian could assemble in 258 a synod of eighty-seven bishops, and in
308 the schismatical Donatists held a council of two hundred and seventy
bishops at Carthage. The dioceses, of course, were small in those days.

The oldest Latin translation of
the Bible, miscalled "Itala" (the basis of Jerome's
"Vulgata"), was made probably in Africa and for Africa, not in Rome
and for Rome, where at that time the Greek language prevailed among Christians.
Latin theology, too, was not born in Rome, but in Carthage. Tertullian is its
father. Minutius Felix, Arnobius, and Cyprian bear witness to the activity and
prosperity of African Christianity and theology in the third century. It
reached its highest perfection during the first quarter of the fifth century in
the sublime intellect and burning heart of St. Augustin, the greatest among the
fathers, but soon after his death (430) it was buried first beneath the Vandal
barbarism, and in the seventh century by the Mohammedan conquest. Yet his
writings led Christian thought in the Latin church throughout the dark ages,
stimulated the Reformers, and are a vital force to this day.

§ 11. Christianity in Europe.

"Westward
the course of Empire takes its way."

This law of history is also the
law of Christianity. From Jerusalem to Rome was the march of the apostolic
church. Further and further West has been the progress of missions ever since.

The church of Rome was by far the most important one
for all the West. According to Eusebius, it had in the middle of the third
century one bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons with as many
sub-deacons, forty-two acolyths, fifty readers, exorcists, and door-keepers,
and fifteen hundred widows and poor persons under its care. From this we might
estimate the number of members at some fifty or sixty thousand, i.e. about
one-twentieth of the population of the city, which cannot be accurately
determined indeed, but must have exceeded one million during the reign of the
Antonines.9 The strength of Christianity in Rome is also confirmed by the
enormous extent of the catacombs where the Christians were buried.

From Rome the church spread to
all the cities of Italy. The
first Roman provincial synod, of which we have information, numbered twelve
bishops under the presidency of Telesphorus (142-154). In the middle of the
third century (255) Cornelius of Rome held a council of sixty bishops.

The persecution of the year 177 shows
the church already planted in the south of Gaul
in the second century. Christianity came hither probably from the East;
for the churches of Lyons and Vienne were intimately connected with those of
Asia Minor, to which they sent a report of the persecution, and Irenaeus,
bishop of Lyons, was a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna. Gregory of Tours states,
that in the middle of the third century seven missionaries were sent from Rome
to Gaul. One of these, Dionysius, founded the first church of Paris, died a martyr
at Montmartre, and became the patron saint of France. Popular superstition
afterwards confounded him with Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted by
Paul at Athens.

Spain probably became acquainted with
Christianity likewise in the second century, though no clear traces of churches
and bishops there meet us till the middle of the third. The council of Elvira
in 306 numbered nineteen bishops. The apostle Paul once formed the plan of a
missionary journey to Spain, and according to Clement of Rome he preached
there, if we understand that country to be meant by "the limit of the
West," to which he says that Paul carried the gospel.10 But there is no trace of his labors in Spain on record. The
legend, in defiance of all chronology, derives Christianity in that country
from James the Elder, who was executed in Jerusalem in 44, and is said to be
buried at Campostella, the famous place of pilgrimage, where his bones were
first discovered under Alphonse II, towards the close of the eighth century.11

When Irenaeus speaks of the
preaching of the gospel among the Germans
and other barbarians, who, "without paper and ink, have salvation
written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit," he can refer only to the
parts of Germany belonging to the Roman empire (Germania cisrhenana).

According to Tertullian Britain also was brought under the
power of the cross towards the end of the second century. The Celtic church
existed in England, Ireland, and Scotland, independently of Rome, long before
the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons by the Roman mission of Augustine; it
continued for some time after that event and sent offshoots to Germany, France,
and the Low Countries, but was ultimately at different dates incorporated with
the Roman church. It took its origin probably from Gaul, and afterwards from
Italy also. The legend traces it to St. Paul and other apostolic founders. The
venerable Bede (†735) says, that the British king Lucius (about 167) applied to
the Roman bishop Eleutherus for missionaries. At the council of Arles, in Gaul
(Arelate), in 314, three British bishops, of Eboracum (York), Londinum
(London), and Colonia Londinensium (i.e. either Lincoln or more probably
Colchester), were present.

The conversion of the barbarians
of Northern and Western Europe did not begin in earnest before the fifth and
sixth centuries, and will claim our attention in the history of the Middle
Ages.

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

5 "Sola vobis relinqitimus templa."Apol.c. 37. Long before Tertullian the
heathen Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan (Epp. x. 97) had spoken of
"desolata
templa"
and "sacra
solemnia diu intermissa, " in consequence of the spread of the Christian superstition
throughout the cities and villages of Asia Minor.

6 The Phoenician or Punic name is Karthada, the Greek Karchedon
(Karchdwvn), the Latin Carthago. It means New City (Neapolis).
The word Kereth or Carth enters also into the names of
other cities of Phoenician origin, as Cirta in Numidia.

7 See the masterly comparison of Rome and Carthage by Mommsen, Book
III.ch. 1. (vol. I. 506), of the destruction of Carthage in Book IV. ch. 1.
(vol. II. 22 sqq.)

8 On the ruins of Carthage see the descriptions of N. Davis and B.
Smith (Rome and Carthage, ch. xx. 263-291). The recent conquest of Tunis
by France (1881) gives new interest to the past of that country, and opens a
new chapter for its future. Smith describes Tunis as the most Oriental of
Oriental towns, with a gorgeous mixture of races—Arabs, Turks, Moors, and
Negroes—held together by the religion of Islam.

9 Gibbon, in his; thirty-first chapter, and Milman estimate the
population of Rome at 1,200,000; Hoeck (on the basis of the Monumentum
Ancyranum), Zumpt and Howson at two millions; Bunsen somewhat lower; while
Dureau de la Malle tries to reduce it to half a million, on the ground that the
walls of Servius Tullius occupied an area only one-fifth of that of Paris. But
these walls no longer marked the limits of the city since its reconstruction
after the conflagration under Nero, and the suburbs stretched to an unlimited
extent into the country. Comp. vol. I. p. 359

11 See J. B. Gams (R.C.): Die Kirchengeschichte von
Spanien,
Regensburg, 1862-1879, 5 vols. The first vol. (422 pages) is taken up with the
legendary history of the first three centuries. 75 pages are given to the
discussion of Paul's journey to Spain. Gams traces Christianity in that country
to Paul and to seven disciples of the Apostles sent to Rome, namely, Torquatus,
Ctesiphon, Secundus, Indaletius, Caecilius, Hesychius, and Euphrasius (according
to the Roman Martyrologium, edited by Baronius, 1586).